Virtual receptionist, answering service or your own team, and which one fits
An answering service takes a message. A virtual receptionist can also transfer the call, answer simple questions and sometimes book an appointment. Both charge by the call, so for a few calls a day they're the cheapest way to make sure someone picks up, including after hours.
Once the calls run to dozens a day, or each one creates work, a dedicated person starts to cost less. Below: what each model does, published Australian and UK prices, and the arithmetic for the crossover.
Serkan Honeine, Co-founder, CoSauce
Published · Last updated
The four models in plain terms
An answering service is a shared team answering calls for many businesses. They greet the caller in your name, take the details and send you a message. A virtual receptionist is the same shared team doing more per call. They put the caller through to you, answer questions from a script you give them, and on some plans book into your diary. A dedicated remote team member works only for you, in your systems, and does the work the call creates. An AI receptionist is software that answers and routes calls. We cover that one in its own article on the AI receptionist, so it gets only a line here.
| Model | How it's priced | What it does | What it can't do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answering service | A monthly fee plus a charge per call or per message | Answers in your name, takes a message, sends it by email or SMS | Fix the problem, see your systems or follow up |
| Virtual receptionist | A monthly fee plus a higher charge per call, or per minute for booking work | Transfers calls, answers simple questions, books into your diary on some plans | Work between calls or own a customer issue to the end |
| Dedicated remote team member | A fixed monthly fee, whatever the call count | Answers, then does the work: updates the CRM, follows up, books, chases | Cover every hour of the week on their own |
| AI receptionist | Per minute, per call or a monthly bundle | Answers at any hour, takes details, routes calls, books where connected | Handle calls that need judgement or a human voice |
What answering services and virtual receptionists cost in Australia
Virtual Headquarters publishes both models side by side, which makes the difference easy to see (Virtual HQ pricing). All prices are plus GST:
- Message Express, pay as you go: $25 a month plus $2.50 a call.
- Message Express 50: $115 a month for 50 calls, then $2.45 for each extra call.
- Virtual Receptionist 50: $185 a month for 50 calls, then $3.99 for each extra call.
- MyAssistant and MyDiary, for booking work: $49 a month plus $2.99 a minute, with a setup fee.
The step from taking a message to transferring calls costs about $1.54 more per extra call. Virtual HQ's live answering page says its receptionists can transfer calls to the people you name, and that it aims to answer within four rings (Virtual HQ live answering).
Phone Answering Services lists plans from $30 a month with 15 calls, or $40 with call transfer added, both excluding GST. Its excess rate per message isn't published, so ask for it (Phone Answering Services).
For comparison, Siptalk lists an AI virtual receptionist at 27.5¢ a minute, and its pricing page says all prices include GST (Siptalk pricing).
What they cost in the UK
Mail Boxes Etc. lists a live answering plan at £47.94 plus VAT a month for 20 calls. Extra calls cost £1.50 each from 21 to 50, £1.20 from 51 to 100 and £1.10 from 101 to 200. Live answering runs 8am to 7pm on weekdays and 9am to 3pm on Saturday. Outside those hours calls go to an answerphone or your mobile (MBE telephone answering).
Connect Communications charges per message sent or call transferred, not per call received, and doesn't charge for sales calls, hang-ups or wrong numbers. Its tariffs run from £14.99 a month for 5 messages to £1,209.99 for 1,000, excluding VAT. The page says it was last updated on 1 July 2020, so confirm the figures before you rely on them (Connect CLASSIC tariffs). If your callers are mostly in Britain, we also run customer teams for UK businesses.
After-hours answering
Check the hours before you look at the price, because they vary more than the rates do. Virtual HQ says its live answering runs 24/7, including weekends and public holidays, and that after-hours staff can escalate urgent calls to your on-call person (Virtual HQ after hours). Phone Answering Services also lists 24/7 live cover. The MBE plan above stops at 7pm and doesn't open on Sunday, so two plans at a similar price can cover quite different weeks.
For after-hours calls, per-call pricing is usually the right answer. Night calls are few, and a full shift to wait for them is hard to justify. The exception is a business where night calls are the work, such as travel or roadside help.
When a dedicated person beats per-call pricing
Take an Australian business on Virtual HQ's Virtual Receptionist 50 plan: $185 a month for 50 calls, then $3.99 a call, plus GST. The one assumption is how many calls you get in a month, so here are four answers.
- 100 calls a month: $185 + 50 × $3.99 = $384.50 a month, or $4,614 a year.
- 300 calls a month: $185 + 250 × $3.99 = $1,182.50 a month, or $14,190 a year.
- 600 calls a month: $185 + 550 × $3.99 = $2,379.50 a month, or $28,554 a year.
- 1,100 calls a month: $185 + 1,050 × $3.99 = $4,374.50 a month, or $52,494 a year.
SEEK's average advertised salary for receptionists in Administration and Office Support is $52,387, as of November 2026 (SEEK receptionist salary). So on salary alone, per-call pricing matches one in-house receptionist at about 1,100 calls a month. That's roughly 50 calls a working day.
Salary isn't the whole cost of a hire. Some of the ads SEEK counts include super and some don't, and you still pay for leave, recruitment and a desk. A dedicated remote person costs less than an in-house hire, so the crossover comes earlier. To find yours, take the monthly quote for a dedicated person, subtract $185 and divide by $3.99. Add 50 and that's the monthly call count where the person becomes cheaper.
The UK numbers favour per-call pricing for longer. The National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026 (GOV.UK minimum wage rates). A full-time person on 37.5 hours a week costs £24,784.50 a year in wages before employer costs. Connect's 1,000-message tariff comes to £14,519.88 a year. Mail Boxes Etc. comes to £262.94 a month for 200 calls, if each price band applies only to the calls inside it. On price alone, a UK business answering a few hundred calls a month should use a service.
Price isn't the only test, though. If most calls end in a message that someone on your team then has to return, you're paying twice. A dedicated person can answer, look up the account, fix the booking and close the job. That's when we'd look at a dedicated customer team. Ours work from South Africa under named logins inside your own software, in a 24/7 operation, and go live in about four weeks. You can read how we set that up, and what outsourcing customer service costs in more detail.
Questions
Do answering services charge for wrong numbers and sales calls?
It depends on the provider. Connect says it doesn't charge for sales calls, hang-ups or wrong numbers, and MBE says nuisance calls don't count towards your allowance. Ask any provider how they count a call before you compare per-call prices.
Are Australian answering service prices quoted with GST?
Often not. Virtual HQ and Phone Answering Services both quote prices excluding GST, while Siptalk's prices include it. Put every quote on the same basis before you compare.
Can I use a service after hours and my own team during the day?
Yes, and for most businesses it's the cheapest mix. Divert calls to the service when your office closes, or when your own line is busy, and agree what counts as urgent enough to wake someone up.
Next step
If you're getting a few calls a day, use an answering service and keep your money. If your monthly call bill keeps climbing, or every message turns into more work for your team, book a call with me. Bring last month's call count and the invoice, and we'll work out together whether a dedicated person makes sense. If it doesn't, I'll say so.